Albania has only two mobile phone operators - AMC and Vodafone. The absence of competition and effective government regulation leads to the inevitable. If I want to phone an AMC mobile from my AMC mobile it costs me 35 Lek per minute. If I want to phone a Vodafone mobile it cost 75 Lek.
To put that in more familiar terms, AMC to AMC costs 20 pence (GBP), 28c (EUR), or 36c (USD), while AMC to Vodafone costs 42 pence (GBP), 61c (EUR) or 77c (USD). You will not be surprised to hear that Vodafone's charges are exactly the same.
It was in protest against these charges and the informal cartel that keeps them at these extortionate levels that the Albanian Coalition Against Corruption organised a protest campaign. One of the posters I featured on a previous post was part of that campaign.
Under the slogan Cellulari Dëmton Rëndë Xhepin, they called on cellphone users to switch them off for an hour on 8th June. The Coalition claimed that 75% of the 300 cellphones they called during the protest had been switched off.
It was a good idea, but it is hard to see it succeeding. With no serious competition, people have nowhere else to go. With no government regulation to break up informal cartels and complex monopolies the companies really have nothing to fear.
Instead they can go on proclaiming their commitment to consumer choice and the market while acting exclusively in their own interests through their anti-competitive practices.
The poster in the photograph above is in my possession since I liberated from a tree downtown. If anyone would like it I can post it to you for 75 Lek per mile.
To put that in more familiar terms, AMC to AMC costs 20 pence (GBP), 28c (EUR), or 36c (USD), while AMC to Vodafone costs 42 pence (GBP), 61c (EUR) or 77c (USD). You will not be surprised to hear that Vodafone's charges are exactly the same.
It was in protest against these charges and the informal cartel that keeps them at these extortionate levels that the Albanian Coalition Against Corruption organised a protest campaign. One of the posters I featured on a previous post was part of that campaign.
Under the slogan Cellulari Dëmton Rëndë Xhepin, they called on cellphone users to switch them off for an hour on 8th June. The Coalition claimed that 75% of the 300 cellphones they called during the protest had been switched off.
It was a good idea, but it is hard to see it succeeding. With no serious competition, people have nowhere else to go. With no government regulation to break up informal cartels and complex monopolies the companies really have nothing to fear.
Instead they can go on proclaiming their commitment to consumer choice and the market while acting exclusively in their own interests through their anti-competitive practices.
The poster in the photograph above is in my possession since I liberated from a tree downtown. If anyone would like it I can post it to you for 75 Lek per mile.
Comments
Ll.T.
tomato-tomaato
The twig is bent.
"Vodafone Albania is the second largest mobile operator in the country. It is majority owned by Vodafone Group PLC, the UK-based global wireless operator, and is managed by its subsidiary Vodafone-Panafon S.A., the Greek mobile telecoms company"
http://www.ebrd.com/new/pressrel/2004/21feb17.htm
Now, we can discuss here all day long (we're known for doing that) but I seriously doubt that the holding company in Britain really deals much with V Al. In that sense, V-P controls (read "owns") V Al.
We can all start buy shares in V PLC but with a current market cap of $123.6 B it would take a long time to get controlling interest :)